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Tuesday, 8 January 2019

An Anti-Israel Activist Enters Congress.

Elected as the US House Representative for the state
of Michigan, Palestinian Rashida Tlaib has entered the US Congress in order to
promote a Palestinian and Islamic agenda and, on her first day in office, she showed
her antisemitic temperament in a tweet when she accused American supporters of
Israel, namely Jews, as not being quite American.

In other words, as she plots her pro-Palestinian politics she accuses others as
being disloyal Americans as she enters Congress draped in the Palestinian flag.

Expect a lot more anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, attacks from this representative,
and from others who have joined her in the House on the far left of the
Democratic Party.
The anti-Israel boycott campaign from within the US
Congress has begun.This is part of the new politics of the Democratic
Party.

As Mort Klein, President of the Zionist Organization of America, wrote back on November 30, 2018, Palestinian anti-Semitism is becoming mainstreamed and normalized.

Here is her offensive tweet;

“@RashidaTlaib · Jan 7, 2019.They forgot what country they represent. This
is the U.S. where boycotting is a right & part of our historical fight for
freedom & equality. Maybe a refresher on our U.S. Constitution is in order,
then get back to opening up our government instead of taking our rights away.”

In response to her “dual loyalty” tweet, the American Jewish
Committee posted a picture of newly elected Tlaib embracing a woman draped in a
Palestinian flag with the message, “Tell us more about dual loyalty @Rashida
Tiaib”

Abraham Foxman, former national director of the Anti-Deformation
League, posted, “Rep.Rashida Tlaib ‘They forgot what country they represent.’
Where is the bi-partisan outrage to this classic anti-Semitic canard of dual
loyalty?”

But Rashida Tlaib is not a one-off, rude remark, House
Representative. Tlaib has an agenda that she intends to execute.

Tlaib has said, “I personally support the BDS movement. Economic
boycotts are the way to bring attention to issues like racism and the
international human rights violations by Israel right now.”

Tlaib may find herself in infringement of anti-BDS legislation that
has been passed by twenty-eight States, including her own of Michigan, that can
punish, under state law, anyone engaged in boycott activities against Israel.

Rashida Tlaib said she will organize a Congressional delegation to “Palestine.”
She says she wants to give an alternative to AIPAC’s “one-sided, lavish
trips to Israel.”

During their visit to her “Israeli-occupied West Bank,” her
Congress guests must visit with Issam Akel while they are in Ramallah.

53-year-old Palestinian Akel was sentenced to life imprisonment
with hard labor by the Palestinian Authority for selling his property in
Jerusalem to a Jew. How’s that for an international human rights violation,
Congresswoman Tlaib?

Like Tlieb, Issam Akel is a Palestinian who holds American
citizenship. All the more reason for United States Congress people to visit him
and to demand his release not by Israel, but by the Palestinian Authority who
put him behind bars for racist, anti-Semitic, reasons.

But Tlaib won’t even mention Akel. He won’t be included in her
itinerary. But members of her delegation should insist that he is on the top of
their list of priorities, no matter how embarrassing this will be for Rashida
Tlaib.

Tlaib may explain to her guests that the punishment of Akel is not
perceived as an international human rights violation by her or Palestinians
because it is official policy that a future Palestine will be Judenrein, free
of Jews.

United State Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, who happens to
be Jewish, has demanded that the Palestinian Authority immediately release
Akel. Why doesn’t Palestinian Congresswoman Tlaib object to this Palestinian
anti-Semitic punishment?

While they are here, her visitors should also inspect the PA detention
center in Jericho where other Palestinian prisoners are languishing, and where
torture is regularly inflicted on political prisoners for opposing the corrupt
kleptocracy of Mahmoud Abbas’s unelected Palestinian Authority.

Recently, reporter Tim Sebastian embarrassed PA senior official,
Saeb Erekat, in a TV interview about detention centers in his hometown of
Jericho in which Palestinian prisoners are being tortured.

Human Rights Watch issued the result of a two-year investigation
into 86 cases in which Palestinian authorities routinely arrest peaceful protesters
and torture those in their custody.

HRW claim that Palestinian arrests for non-violent speech acts
constitute serious violations of international human rights law, an issue which
Rashida Tlaib claims to champion but doesn’t, because these contraventions of
legal obligations are being perpetrated by the Palestinian Authority in the
West Bank, and by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Human Rights Watch wrote that “the torture as practiced by both
the PA and Hamas may amount to a crime against humanity, given its systematic
practice over many years.”

It is certain that Rashida Tlaib will studiously avoid any mention
of these international human rights crimes because the culprit is the
Palestinian leadership, and this goes against her false narrative.

I mentioned the unelected, undemocratic, Palestinian leadership.
The last time the Palestinians held national elections was in 2005. The
intention was that national elections be held every four years. Well, it’s been
a long four years between 2005 and 2019. So much for the democratic process
that Tlaib can proudly show her fellow congressmen and women.

The problem was that Hamas won the election by taking 74 of the 132
seats. Fatah only got 45.

The Palestinians intended to hold elections in 2009, but they got
cancelled because they were killing each other in the Gaza Strip.

Then they decided to hold them in 2014, but they got delayed indefinitely
when the Palestinian court found “serious irregularities” concerning the
removal of Fatah candidates in Gaza by Hamas. Then the court decided to implement
the Palestinian Authority cabinet’s decision to hold elections in all local
councils, except in the Gaza Strip. Basically the reason was that Fatah was
frightened of being slaughtered in the polls.

A Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, blasted the ruling as a “politicization
of the court system.”

So national elections were delayed again until the end of 2017, but
they got delayed because of a deepening conflict between Fatah and Hamas.

Then, at the end of December 2018, Mahmoud Abbas announced that he
would hold national elections “within six months,” but that announcement
was treated with a yawn by the international community.

A senior Hamas official, Mohammed Nazzal, said about any future
national election, “If elections are free and fair, Mahmoud Abbas will
suffer a stunning defeat.”

Hence the yawn. The world knows that any democratic process under
Palestinian rule will result in a Hamas victory, an outcome devoutly to be
avoided. So better no democracy than a bad democracy.

It needs emphasizing that Israel had nothing to do with this fourteen-year
breakdown in Palestinian democracy. It had everything to do with two decades of
deadly internecine violence between the two sides of the Palestinian political
and Islamic divide, a chasm that time and enmity has been unable to solve, a
divide that will surely turn any future Palestine into a second Hamastan.

Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib said she wanted to provide her visitors
with “a real, fair lens into this issue”?

So bring them, Rashida Tlaib, and don’t forget to bring your
distinguished guests to Israel’s Knesset in Jerusalem where you and they will
see true democracy in action.

Israel, a place where Jews are not threatened with a death sentence
or life imprisonment for selling property to Arabs, contrary to the Palestinian
policy.

Israel, a democracy that is not Arab-rein, free of Arabs, but a
nation in which Israeli Arabs have their political representatives sitting in the
Knesset alongside their Jewish colleagues.

But I guess this is part of her “real, fair lens into this issue”
that Rashida Tlaib will try to hide.

Barry Shaw is the Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the
Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

He is the author of ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS, and Anti-Semitism,” An
investigation into the Jew hatred in every aspect of the Palestinian cause.